If you had asked me last week if I had wanted to see more on Barragan, I would have probably said “No” because I really just want the story to move forward. This chapter, however, actually proved to be pretty interesting because it filled in a story hole about how Aizen, Ichimaru, and Tousen took over Hueco Mundo, and they looked very cool in the process. It’s a shame we didn’t see Aizen having to fight Barragan directly or anything (and having to deal with the decay), but having Barragan’s last act be to throw his axe at Aizen was also a nice if ultimately futile touch. It’s also noteworthy that it was sort of explained how Barragan wasn’t immune against his own ability, which was something I found odd after last week’s chapter. Looking forward, the end of this chapter seems to suggest that the next battle will be Starrk vs. Rose & Love and not the Harribel fight. That seems a bit odd if Starrk is to be the most powerful, but maybe there’s something special planned for Harribel, or maybe her fight will actually come first.

A new commercial for Darker than BLACK: Ryuusei no Gemini aired with this week’s episode of Basquash. This one revealed that the new girl is named Suou and that the initial setting will be Vladivostok, Russia, but I didn’t see anything in it that wasn’t already shown in the longer promo video that’s available on the official site. Assuming they go with a normal promotion strategy, there’s probably two more commercials in store before the premiere of the show, at least one of which will feature the new OP or ED. I’m hoping one of them will be a Rie fu song.

SCANDAL, the self-proclaimed “Most Powerful Japanese Girlie Pop Rock”, appeared on NHK’s MUSIC JAPAN Shinseki Anisong Special (新世紀アニソンSP) earlier this month. While I didn’t know anything about them prior to today, some of you may know them for performing “Shoujo S”, the tenth opening theme to Bleach.

Anyway, instead of performing one of their songs on this TV special, SCANDAL opted to perform a cover of the ever-so-popular K-ON! ending theme, “Don’t say ‘lazy’”. They’re not quite the Yui, Mio, Mugi, and Ritsu we know, but they are a real-life group of high school friends from Osaka who formed their own band and made it to the big leagues, so it was pretty cool to hear their rendition of this awesome song. The only thing that would’ve made this a bit cooler is a keyboardist for the true Houkago Tea Time composition.